A site redesign or switch to a new platform is kind of like a rebirth – it’s one of the most exciting and nerve-wracking times for the entire Internet marketing team. With everyone caught up in the branding, design, usability and technology, the impact on SEO can sometimes be forgotten until the last minute.

I wrote this article on redesigning a site with SEO in mind back in July for MultichannelMerchant.com and gave up looking for it to be published… so I missed its publish date in September. Maybe you did too. Here’s a redux of the original article.

While it’s difficult to determine what the natural search impact will be until working code hits a development server, keeping several mantras in mind and repeating them liberally will keep the team focused on the most critical elements to plan for SEO success. I love these mantras — I actually say them to myself as I’m auditing sites.

SEO Development Mantras

Links must be crawlable with JavaScript, CSS and cookies disabled.

Plain text must be indexable on the page with JavaScript & CSS disabled.

Every page must send a unique keyword signal.

One URL for one page of content.

We’re going to 301 that, right?

When a site is stable on the development environment and the URLs are ironed out, identify a 301 redirect plan, build the new XML sitemap and make sure you have a measurement plan in place to measure the impact of the relaunch.